Overview of the company
Analyse the Social Media-Marketing Plan of Target.
The following report discusses the marketing strategies of Target. The company is a largest retailer in the country. It also has different brick and mortar stores present in the key international places. The report outlines the history and product profile of the company. The range of product and services given by the company is also given in the report. The social media strategy of Target is discussed as well as the promotional event of the company. They are one of the most successful company listed under the Forbe’s global magazine (Hudson, Huang, Roth, & Madden, 2016). Further, the report contains social media analysis of the company. As well as the objectives of using this media and effectiveness, they have after incorporating integrated marketing communication in the company’s promotional plan.
History – The company was established in 1902 as a dry goods company and after that they started acquiring different departmental stores all across US. The merging with J.L Hudson Company, it became Dayton-Hudson Company in 1962 (www.target.com). After the corporation was named Target. This division of the company is known as the most profit making. The company comes under the category of supermarket with its wide range of products. It became a cheap chic player in the industry (Hollebeek, Glynn & Brodie, 2014). It became a largest retailer in US after Wal-Mart.
Market/Industry they operate in – The retail industry has always been competitive. They started divesting from different departmental stores after they started expanding. The industry that they operate within has different large competitors like Wal-Mart, Woolworths, Tesco and small local retailers.
The products or services – Their in-house products are different groceries of Archer Farms, market Pantry, A premium meat line of Sutton and Dodge, camping equipment, Low end home good products, Pet Food Supply Line, Different Clothing brands included their own like, Mossimo Supply Co., different household products and apparels, equipments and accessories (www.target.com). The company has also expanded in the financial services and retail service. The mission statement of the company is “Expect more. Pay Less” which served them to get ahead of the competition. In the ecommerce industry, it is more centralised and have formed strategic alliances with the other brands like Pillowfort, Cat and Jack. The industry segment also has a growth of more than 3 %. The consumer’s increased savings affects the outcome of this industry. With the presence in the international market, they have also expanded in the ecommerce sector as in Target.direct or Target.com Founded in 2000 (Hudson, Huang, Roth, & Madden, 2016). The company also has different distribution centres all across the world. The company has three different processes in distribution centre. The marketing process is done through brick, mortar, online, and catalogs. As being a mass merchandise the company has also wide range of target market.
Social media usage, objectives and effectiveness
Target market -. The clothing section of the company are targeted at kids from 1-5 and their separate kid’s apparel section also contains a larger target market. As an upscale market retailers and attractive prices, the company is guest friendly (www.target.com). They have strong online presence backed with the delivery services, which contains a large demography of online purchaser. The young middle class consumer and from an age of 20 to 40 is their concentration of target customers. The people with an income between 65,000$ to $80,000 dollars also comes under the target customers of the country. Their 57% of the consumers have completed college or have passed out the high school.
Target has promotional plan dependent on using the social media. They have evolved and changed their marketing strategy from rectifying the in-store experience to using the social media experience. The company’s main motive to use this social media to engage the customers more with the company objectives and enhance effectiveness (Felix, Rauschnabel, & Hinsch, 2017). The main criteria for a company are to use this social platform to increase the opportunities of profitability of the business, to make people aware of the company’s new products and services. They are using the Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Tumblr. They have 6 different accounts in Twitter. For example, @Target, @TargetCareers, @TargetStyle and @ABullseyeView, which have different purpose like latest promotion, new style and other hiring information communication (Godey et al. 2016). Facebook has 3 different account, for community fans, baby supply registry, and fashion and beauty products. Target has three different YouTube channels by which the Target brand commercials are promoted Bolton et al. 2013). Instagram most probably promotes the beauty and clothing brands available on target. The company undertook a campaign with a bull’s eye dog as a mascot (Hudson, Huang, Roth, & Madden, 2016). The bull’s eye campaign was also a signage for the company. It also promotes social responsibility initiatives through the social media campaign. According the annual report of the company their gross allocation of investment in advertisements cost is 1653,000 thousand dollars (Felix, Rauschnabel, & Hinsch, 2017). The social media campaign’s success of the company is known as to be gathered from the number of likes, followers and subscribers of the company. They have more than subscribed 20,000 followers, 131,518 Instagram followers and more than 10 lakhs of twitter followers (Godey et al. 2016). Therefore, the company is quite effective in using this social media platform in their business. Their exclusive website of the company Target.com is also successful in using it as per their market operation.
Strength
- Creative online campaign
- Real time conversations with their customers over online channels
- Strategic partner over social platform
- Many accounts to publicise the brands
Weakness
- Major gender specific display in their advertisements
- Loss of Customer data and credit card information affected their company(Godey et al. 2016)
- Fear of impersonification as a big brands
Opportunities
- Creating loyal following
- Driving the new customers to their brick and mortar stores
- Giving better customer service and feedbacks (Bolton et al. 2013)
- Social media and community attraction
Threats
- Losing the position as market challenger to the next competitors
- Lesser response over media than other companies
- Negative comments can influence greatly over social media
The main competitors of Target are Wal-Mart, Sears, Woolworths and Tesco. These companies belong to this industry of Retail as well as the discount retail chain. The main criteria by comparing the social media success of the company are to check the number of subscribers, followers and likes in the posts in Face Book (Ashley & Tuten, 2015)..
Table :Social media usage of big retails
Source : (Ashley & Tuten, 2015)
Therefore, from the above table it can be concluded that Target is in market challenger position in utilising social media marketing data from the table
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded that Target has evolved with the social media over the previous years. There marketing campaign over the social media is utilised properly. The company has an extensive amount of experience in the retail industry being in the market for more than 60 years. The social media promotional analysis through SWOT has revealed that it has huge number of followers, subscribers and loyal customers of the company. Therefore, it can be recommended that they can expand their more in the international places. Like South Africa, Dubai and other strategic places. They can also continue to expand in the Canadian market. As gauged from the weakness analysis they can also improve their customer relationship management. Using Big Data they can also predict the client’s taste and preferences
References
Ashley, C., & Tuten, T. (2015). Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & Marketing, 32(1), 15-27. doi/10.1002/mar.20761/full
Bolton, R. N., Parasuraman, A., Hoefnagels, A., Migchels, N., Kabadayi, S., Gruber, T., … & Solnet, D. (2013). Understanding Generation Y and their use of social media: a review and research agenda. Journal of Service Management, 24(3), 245-267.doi/full/10.1108/09564231311326987
Chang, Y. T., Yu, H., & Lu, H. P. (2015). Persuasive messages, popularity cohesion, and message diffusion in social media marketing. Journal of Business Research, 68(4), 777-782. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2014.11.027
Felix, R., Rauschnabel, P. A., & Hinsch, C. (2017). Elements of strategic social media marketing: A holistic framework. Journal of Business Research, 70, 118-126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.05.001
Godey, B., Manthiou, A., Pederzoli, D., Rokka, J., Aiello, G., Donvito, R., & Singh, R. (2016). Social media marketing efforts of luxury brands: Influence on brand equity and consumer behavior. Journal of business research, 69(12), 5833-5841. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.04.181
Hollebeek, L. D., Glynn, M. S., & Brodie, R. J. (2014). Consumer brand engagement in social media: Conceptualization, scale development and validation. Journal of interactive marketing, 28(2), 149-165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intmar.2013.12.002
Hudson, S., Huang, L., Roth, M. S., & Madden, T. J. (2016). The influence of social media interactions on consumer–brand relationships: A three-country study of brand perceptions and marketing behaviors. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 33(1), 27-41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2015.06.004
Kumar, A., Bezawada, R., Rishika, R., Janakiraman, R., & Kannan, P. K. (2016). From social to sale: The effects of firm-generated content in social media on customer behavior. American Marketing Association. doi/full/10.1509/jm.14.0249
Menon, R. V., Sigurdsson, V., Larsen, N. M., Fagerstrøm, A., & Foxall, G. R. (2016). Consumer attention to price in social commerce: Eye tracking patterns in retail clothing. Journal of Business Research, 69(11), 5008-5013. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.04.072
Target : Expect More. Pay Less.. (2017). Target.com. Retrieved 10 December 2017, from https://www.target.com/
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